


Fragments

by Dassandre



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Loss, M/M, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 11:39:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17642087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/pseuds/Dassandre
Summary: From some things, there was no recovery.





	Fragments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Boffin1710](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/gifts), [AsheTarasovich (natalieashe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/gifts), [springbok7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/springbok7/gifts).



> Heed the Archive Warning.
> 
> This is this result of trying to work through writer's block and an unexplained fear of my own words. No clue if I just made things better or worse for that. ::shrug::
> 
>  
> 
> Let me know what you think.

The sketchbook was empty.  Had been for months now.

Impossible to design when he couldn’t even hold a pencil, anymore.  Coding and hacking were lost to him, too.

His hands had never healed properly.  His fingers had been broken … and broken again.

And again.  
  
Though articulate -- perhaps at times grandiloquent -- the pitch and timbre of his voice had never been extravagant.

Soft-spoken.

Now he couldn’t speak.

The damage to his vocal cords on par with that to his hands.  

R had taken over after his abduction.  Those first desperate days turning to a week.  Then a month.

Then six.

The year since.

Quartermaster … in name only.

A kindness from Mallory based in the illusion he would recover.

It was no kindness for from some things, there was no recovery.

No healing.

He was useless.  Of no help to himself let alone to those who mattered.

His agents.  His Branch. His country.

His love.

A shade of his former self.  

The whisper his own throat couldn’t sound.

And his mind ...

If only the concussions and skull fractures from the beatings and the oxygen deprivation from the hangings and strangulations  had left him diminished there, too.  

He wouldn’t know enough to feel the loss, then.

But he knew.

He _knew_.

So did James.  Understood that living like this -- with no hope for improvement -- was … well, not living.

Realised that even though he’d just got him back, he’d never _really_ got him back.

And loved him enough to let him go.

Brought him the first and only thing he had truly asked for since returning.

He took up the P365 from the desk next to the empty sketchbook and the dead laptop.  Compact enough he could curl his hand around the grip before it seized and cramped.

Before his strength left him.

Again.

The weight was comfortable in his hand.

Familiar.

An echo of his previous life.

He smiled.

Perfect, then, that it should see him to his next.

 


End file.
